There is no day that passes where we don’t hear about hacking of one kind or the other. The most prevalent ones are phishing attacks because they are easy to carry out and the dividends for the hackers are pretty high. Here is another link that shows more statistics on phishing. Please note that the statistics probably are way underestimating the reality because they are generally based on surveys. Since there are no legal requirements to report a phishing attack unless there has been compromises involving personally identifiable information, there is no other database of phishing attacks.

Because of the advances in operating systems and other tools such as antivirus, malware & spyware protection as well as local firewalls, personal computing devices have become much harder to invade directly, unless of course, for a variety of reasons (including the cost of virus protection software), someone decides not to install and run these protection tools. In addition, browsers have become sophisticated in helping protect our information. Again, it requires some effort in terms of updating the browser and sometimes installing additional extensions etc. I strongly recommend you reading “Securing Your Browser” from US-CERT (Computer Emergency Readiness Team), however, use your discretion in reading this given that this is from the US government which has a strong surveillance program. May be a few of their recommendations are to help them gather your information 🙂

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